


Paths to Glory

by eve11



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/pseuds/eve11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fiercest warriors know their sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paths to Glory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



> Written for sirvalkyrie at EleventyFest. The prompt was Strax: backstory.

_[****BEGIN hypno-platitude 74291.1-A****_  
Soldiers of Sontar Hear and Heed!  
Do Not Needlessly Destroy the Weak and Defenseless!  
Instead Use Superior Strength to Appropriate Allies:  
\--All Allies are Assets  
\--All Assets are Allocated for Optimal Gain  
\--All Gain is for the Glory of the Ancient Sons of Sontar!  
Sontar-HA! To Victory!  
 _****REPEAT X 1024**** ]_

Ten days after they were decanted and woken from elementary conditioning with the standard identity and warfare courses published to their brains, two thirds of Trooper Strax's clone batch sacrificed their lives for the glory of the Ancient Sons of Sontar in an attempt to appropriate a Zalkari nursery ship. 

They had been moved from the Empire's 642nd clone production facility directly to warfare and shipped out, the hypno-paedic fluid still drying behind their ears, on the brigade cruiser _Tlax's Talon_ toward the Nexil system. Their mission was to harry the more sparsely guarded Rutan supply routes to their outer colonies, but Strax and his kin were still testing their joints and working the creaks out of their armor when the news filtered down from the War Engines that _Tlax's Talon_ had been reassigned. Orome was twice as far as Nexil and they didn't have extant supplies for the trip. But the orders from the mainframe stood; the deficit was known and accounted for. They were re-routed through the unaligned Zalkar system and could obtain the necessary supplies from Zalkari colony fleets.

They dutifully set course, the hold barracks echoing with war chants--sixty-five thousand strong--exalting the glory of the Ancient Sons of Sontar.

The brigade cruiser's rations were dwindling, but the Sontarans had both superior numbers and superior firepower when they surprised a colony ship deep within Zalkari territory. The ship had no weapons, and the majority of life forms aboard were juveniles, according to the scout scans. First communication was piped through the barracks as helms were secured and rifles readied. Commander Kreel's voice boomed out from above decks, informing the Zalkari that the brigade cruiser was on a critical mission and needed all the fuel and food they possessed. 

The thin-faced creature on screen bared its teeth, tented its ears, and hissed at the display. _"We are mothers and kits. We have nothing to spare, and no quarrel with Sontar."_

 _"Then you will know the glory of allying with the Ancient Sons!"_ the Commander roared, and the brigade in the hold barracks cheered as he raised his hands and clasped a fist. _"Prepare to be boarded!"_

"SONTAR-HA!" echoed the troopers, and set out in vanguard scout ships.

The resistance was fierce and unexpected. Trooper Strax's elite vanguard cut easily enough through the airlock, maintaining pressure with force shields for entry to the interior. They were fanning out among the empty corridors when the lights went out. A few in the vanguard laughed at that; their helmets gave the Soldiers of Sontar excellent night vision. 

Then the gravity was cut, sending the troopers into brief weightlessness. They were to a man reaching down for the grav-control dials on their boots when it switched on again, reversed. Strax's elite vanguard crashed five meters up to the ceiling, landing to a man on the vulnerable armor vents at the backs of their necks. There the Zalkari--mothers, wet nurses, and juveniles all--were waiting for them, with no more than sharp teeth and claws, makeshift clubs, and the magnetic boots that had kept them concealed in the rafters to begin with. 

Strax battled them with zeal and honor, flat on his back and reeling. "For the Ancient Sons!" he called, hearing the same rally cry in the same voice echoing from his fallen comrades across the corridors. But the trap had been sprung, and they were too dazed to put strength behind their blows. Strax was caught by the hands, stripped of his weapon, and left staring upward at the darkened deckplates that he had been standing on mere minutes before.

"Clone scum will never defeat us," a Zalkari hissed at his ear, dragging him toward the upside-down airlock. " _Our_ sons are precious."

To a man, the Sontaran elite vanguard, living and dead, were thrown from the ship to tumble through the vacuum of space. Strax heeded his education and halted the worst of the spin with his suit's maneuvering jets. He oriented back toward _Tlax's Talon_ to regroup and re-engage the battle.

He didn't make it back. Their Zalkari allies did indeed surrender a pallet of fuel to the Sons of Sontar, packaged behind the front bulkhead of a tiny skimmer ship and piloted deftly through a split in the brigade cruiser's defense shield to slam into its hyperspace reactors. The resulting explosion blew away a quarter of the hold barracks and crippled the ship.

The nursery ship closed its airlocks and continued its course. A day later, as Strax struggled to ration breathable air in his trek back to the remains of _Tlax's Talon_ , the Zalkari were merely a fading blink of light in the distance.

Sontaran High Command noted the defeat and subsequently adjusted the nutrient fluids and hypno-platitude repetitions for later clone batches. They added a decorator to the key index values for the survivors of Strax's batch, propagated by ansible throughout the mainframe to interface with the War Engines across every theater simultaneously. 

DISPOSABLE RESOURCE, it read. 

Bids for warfare's worst details flew in from commanders and auto-thinkers at every front. There were blockades to break, mine fields to clear, and rooted enemies to flush out of hiding. What was left of Trooper Strax's clone batch were plucked from space and reassigned. They shipped out, the grav-control dials on their boots still set one-third way toward zero-G, on the diverted brigade cruiser _Battle of Kuraz_ toward the Banaji cluster. Their mission was to draw sniper fire from Rutan patrols camouflaged within the Crystalline Cities of Berith.

They dutifully set course, the hold barracks echoing with war chants--twenty-one thousand strong--exalting the glory of the Ancient Sons of Sontar.

Twelve days old, Trooper Strax was far from ancient. He had yet to set a foot on Sontar, and likely never would. He raised his hands, fist to palm with the rest of his batch. He chanted and sang the songs from his conditioning lessons, and realized he had no clue what a _son_ was. 

But the Zalkari knew. _We are mothers and kits._ And they had triumphed in battle where Strax had failed.

 _Our sons are precious._

In the depths of the hold barracks, Trooper Strax had a revelation, a plan to bring triumph to both his disgraced clone batch and then to the whole of the Sontaran Empire. As they sped toward their next mission, Strax sang with his kin about glory, yearning for the thrill of combat, and the idea--for that's what it was, though he had no word for it--took root and grew. _The fiercest warriors know their sons,_ Strax thought. _To be a true warrior, I must also be a mother._


End file.
